Emacs vs Spacemacs

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.

You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.

With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.

Licensed under GNU GPL.

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.

Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.

Emacs can select rectangularly.

Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.

Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.

With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.

Dynamic word completion.

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.

Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.

Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.

Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.

Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.

Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.

You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.

Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.

Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell.

Emacs is great for everything.

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box.

At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful, allowing the user to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages.

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format.

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit.

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

The community surrounding Spacemacs is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat for users to ask questions.

Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box.

Space-lead key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance, buffer actions are under SPC b, file actions are under SPC f, project actions are under SPC p, search actions are under SPC s, and so on. Keybindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions.

Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is uses the space bar as a default leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI.

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short.

Evil package is a first class citizen and Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs.

There's no need to reach for the mouse again since Spacemacs can be fully controlled with keyboard.

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely.

Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control.

Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time.

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more.

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something.

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup.

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions.